Kamchatka’s Zhupanovsky volcano spews ash 6 km above sea level

June 2015 – KAMCHATKA – Zhupanovsky Volcano in Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka Territory has spewed ash to a height of six kilometers above sea level, the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) of the Institute of Volcanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences told TASS on Tuesday. “The ash column reached six kilometers above sea level. The plume of ash has been taken by the wind to a distance of 30 kilometers in the southerly direction,” a KVERT spokesman said.

The volcano poses no threat to populated localities. Nonetheless, it has been assigned an orange aviation color code. It is not ruled out that the volcano may spew more ash up to eight kilometres high.  Zhupanovsky Volcano, which takes its name from a river of the same name flowing in its vicinity, is located in eastern Kamchatka, some 70 kilometers north of the Kamchatka capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Zhupanovsky is one of the least studied volcanoes in the region despite its proximity to a large city. It is a complex volcano composed of four overlapping cones aligned on a roughly east-west oriented axis, with the highest cone reaching 2,958 meters high, and the lowest one being 2,505 meters high. The giant mount has been active since October 2013. –Panorama